The Secrets of Tableside Caesar Salad at Tijuana’s Iconic Caesar’s Restaurant | Eater San Diego

"At the height of Tijuana’s Prohibition-era decadence, Caesar Cardini first created his eponymous Caesar salad as a tableside specialty that became a favorite of Americans and Hollywood’s A-list. After a decline that led to the original restaurant closing in the late aughts because of strict border restrictions and organized crime, the Plascencia family revived the restaurant at its original Avenida Revolución location in 2010 as part of the city's shift toward a bona fide culinary and arts destination. Longtime waiter Efrain Montoya has mixed the signature salad tableside for more than a decade, sharing its storied past while preparing roughly 100 salads a day (about 4,500 per month); the Caesar remains the restaurant’s best-selling item and the kitchen goes through daily amounts such as 150 eggs, 3 kg anchovies, 5 kg limes, 1 kg garlic, 1 kg mustard, 20 L olive oil, and 75 heads of romaine. The restaurant shut for about three months during the COVID-19 pandemic but has reopened at limited capacity, and besides the Caesar salad the bone marrow sopes (four sopes with bone marrow, gravy, habanero salsa, and coarse salt) are noted as the second-best-selling item. A retro menu collected by owner Juan José Plascencia also includes chateaubriand, beef Wellington, and the Victor’s steak and Victor’s salad to keep historic Tijuana dishes alive." - Mario A. Cortez